Another day, another $100 million. In a move that’s starting to look like a rite of passage in biotech, Caribou Biosciences filed on Thursday to raise $100 million in its Wall Street debut. The proceeds will propel three off-the-shelf CAR-T therapies into and through the clinic and boost Caribou’s work in natural killer (NK) cell therapies.
Caribou is developing all three programs for patients with blood cancers whose disease has come back despite undergoing other treatments or did not respond to those treatments in the first place.
The company’s most advanced program, CB-010, is an anti-CD19 CAR-T that’s in a phase 1 trial in B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Some of the IPO proceeds will support this trial through initial data, which are expected in 2022, according to a securities filing.
The funds will also bankroll IND-enabling activities for two other programs: CB-011, a BCMA-targeting CAR-T in development for the treatment of multiple myeloma and CB-012, a CAR-T targeting CD371 for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia. The company hopes to start human trials for these programs in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
All three programs are allogeneic CAR-T treatments, meaning they are made from donor cells, rather than a patient’s own cells like the four approved CAR-T therapies from Novartis, Gilead’s Kite unit and Bristol Myers Squibb.
Those types of treatments, called autologous, can be complex and time-consuming to make: cells must be taken out of the patient, modified to fight cancer and then put back into the patient. Some patients don’t have enough T cells, or T cells of good enough quality, to make those treatments. Others simply don’t have much time.
Though Caribou’s CAR-T programs all target blood cancer, the company is working on allogeneic NK cell therapies based on induced pluripotent stem cells for solid tumors. Some of the IPO haul will support R&D in this area, as well as the development of the CRISPR technology it uses to make its cell therapies.
In recent years, the cell therapy space has been teeming with new entrants looking to break the barriers seen in the first generation of cell therapies. In 2018, a pair of former Kite Pharma executives unveiled Allogene, a biotech that started out with $300 million and 17 off-the-shelf CAR-T assets licensed from Pfizer.
France-based Mnemo Therapeutics is trying to make CAR-T work for solid tumors by identifying better targets. Other companies, like Catamaran Bio, are going after that same piece of the pie, but via NK cell treatments instead.